OpenSocial Incubating process

Owned by Matthew Marum
Last updated: Aug 10, 2012Version comment
2 min read

This is a proposed process for accepting an Incubating section of the OpenSocial specification as finalized specification.  This process still needs to be approved before it will be adopted.

In the specification roadmap, it says "all major specification changes will be incubated until such time that the community has made significant implementations of these incubating changes and provided feedback. While there is wide agreement in principal, the Community still needs to define and vote on this new process."

Incubating Process (Proposed)

The purpose of incubating specification changes is to allow new features to be entered into the specification with the flexibility to change them over time as we gain implementation experience in using them. 

Currently, new normative specification changes are added as incubating sections to the OpenSocial specification.  Incubating sections in the specification can become finalized sections of the OpenSocial specification once the following requirements have been met.

  1. The incubating feature MUST have three different adoptions (or implementations) of the incubating specification that have seen active use.  Adoption by a product would count.  A prototype implementation that lies dormant does not count.  Adopters SHOULD provide feedback to be incorporated into incubating feature.
  2. The incubating feature MUST have an open source implementation so the community has an option they can freely adopt.  It is preferable that the open source implementation be done in Apache Shindig or Apache Rave but this is not required.

At any time that an incubating specification change has met these requirements, a vote may be called on the specification mailing list for the purpose of accepting the incubating specification change as finalized specification in an upcoming release of the OpenSocial specification.  The voting period will be one week and will require 5 +1 votes and no -1 votes during that time in order to pass.